DAYTON – The Wright State volleyball team battled back all afternoon long on Saturday, but the top-seeded Raiders fell in five sets to No. 4 seed Green Bay in the Horizon League Championship semifinals inside McLin Gymnasium.
Wright State (24-6) now waits for the NCAA Championship Selection Show next Sunday night to see if its résumé and Top 50 RPI will earn the Raiders an at-large berth in the tournament.
On Saturday, Green Bay (16-16) took the opening set 25-20 before the Raiders responded in a big way with a 25-12 second set win and then grabbed the third set, 26-24. Green Bay rallied late in the fourth set for a 25-23 set win to force the fifth set, where they scored the first five points of the deciding set and held off a major Raider push down the stretch on the way to a 15-12 set victory to advance to Sunday's HL championship match.
Wright State finished the afternoon hitting .173 overall with 66 kills and 32 errors, including 10 errors in both the first and third sets, while Green Bay had 53 kills and 28 errors on the way to a .132 hitting mark.
Sam Ott led Wright State with her 10th double-double of the season, tallying 17 kills and 15 digs, while
Lauren Yacobucci passed out 54 of the Raiders' 63 assists and collected 13 digs for her 13th double-double of the campaign.
Elena Dubuc (13),
Mya Ayro (12) and
Reilly Zegunis (10) also finished with double digit kills, with Dubuc adding six digs, Ayro turning in two digs and a pair of blocks and Zegunis filling her stat line with six blocks and five digs.
Taylor Bransfield finished just shy of double digits herself, tallying nine kills with a trio of blocks, with
Katie Sowko chipping in nine blocks with a pair of kills.
Andrea Bortulin and Yacobucci each tallied two service aces each, part of seven total Raider service aces.
Jenny Wessling collecting a match-best 29 digs and
Jenny Morey had 15 digs of her own, giving Wright State four with double-digit digs.
Katie Schulz finished with a match-high 20 kills and Diane Pichelman also had double figure kills with 12 in the win for Green Bay.
